Monday : Trash and Bourbon

It's only Monday?!?!

Legs and knees are sore. My accent is getting pretty decent though. When someone asks, "how you doing?" you don't reply with "good" but with "alright." Just a small sampling of what's up in the south.

Today was day one, or the day we get our sea legs. The church we partner with bought a new building and is in the process of remodeling it to suit their needs. So we'll be doing a lot of work there this week.

Today I did blight busters; a.k.a cleaning up lots; a.k.a yard work. I'm not a big fan of yard work but it's a mission trip and I shouldn't complain, I knew what I was getting into.

Me, along with four others cleaned up half of one lot. A lot that the Bethel team cleaned up last year. There was trash, lots of trash. There was your usual trash, like beer bottles and wrappers but also random trash like a slipper, blowdryer, and the top cover of deodorant sticks. How do those things become trash in a lot?

I thought of each piece of trash as a different story. Each a memory of someone, somewhere that threw their trash out into that lot. I thought of good stories and bad stories. Like, someone finally decided to stop smoking and threw out the whole carton of cigarettes. Or, someone got really drunk, drank a whole bunch of beer, and threw the bottles out of their car in anger at people.

Each piece of trash has a story and we all leave pieces of trash places.

After blight busting was a prayer walk. We went to a nearby park and walked around talking to people on their porch or front lawn. That's how people interact in New Orleans. They sit on their porch and talk to whoever passes by. We prayed as a group for a couple of people.

After the prayer walk was dinner. Before dinner I took a shower. It was good. I ate dinner merrily.

After dinner we just hung out. I sat the whole time, giving my knees a good break from weed whipping and raking up weeds.

After that we got a mini-sermon from the head pastor, John. He talked about the history of the church and the surrounding community. He talked about how if we want to serve the community we have to be in the community. It was more about living out your faith than just talking about it. It was about reaching out to those in need in your community.

After that, we went to the French Quarter. We stopped at Cafe du Monde. Its this place near the river that serves basically glorified doughnuts with a lot of powdered sugar.

We then walked down Bourbon street. The famous-for-all-the-wrong-reasons street. Basically a lot of bars, music, and beer which means a lot of drunk people and people looking to party. It also has some "gentleman club" areas where woman are basically degraded to objects.

Bourbon street is interesting. It's collision of tourism hot spot and "hell on earth." The "hell on earth" may be a little exaggerated but that's the only way I can describe it. I saw children on the street with their parents, which I find a little strange.

Now it's time to sleep. For tomorrow is Tuesday. It supposedly might rain for the rest of the week, which stinks, but oh well.